The SNC is administering the Strategic Land Conservation Directed Grant Program to support land conservation projects that improve public access and protect lands threatened by conversion to development, particularly lands with significant cultural or natural values and those that provide critical resilience to climate change.
Donor Name: Sierra Nevada Conservancy
State: California
Counties: Selected Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/20/2023
Details:
The Strategic Lands Conserved regional goal aims to permanently protect high-benefit lands that are threatened with conversion, represent unique natural characteristics, or are critical for resilience to climate change.
Program Priorities
The WIP Strategic Land Conservation Directed Grant Program conserves lands through the planning and implementation of fee title and conservation easement acquisitions. Acquisitions should aim to protect, restore, or create one or more of the priorities below:
- Important natural lands and expand connectivity and potential for adaptation to climate change
- Climate resilience by protecting and stewarding key landscapes that store carbon, improve water availability, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire
- Protect and steward water resources, including watersheds, riparian areas, wetlands, and headwaters
- Unique cultural and/or natural areas
- Land of special significance to a Native American tribe
- Working landscapes including farms, ranches, and forests to help local economies
- Access to public lands and recreation opportunities
Project Categories
The Strategic Land Conservation Grant Program supports planning projects and implementation projects, as described below. Each project proposal must identify whether it is a planning or implementation project; the project types may not be combined.
Project Categories
- Planning Projects: Planning projects are limited to pre-project activities necessary for a specific future land conservation acquisition. Activities include the required due diligence to complete a specific land conservation acquisition as described under implementation projects. The property or rights to be acquired must be identified, and a letter of intent from the willing seller must be presented.
- Implementation Projects: Implementation projects should complete a fee-title or conservation easement acquisition, including those which provide access for public use or to public lands. Grant deliverables should include a completed acquisition. Implementation projects should have all due diligence, including a current appraisal, completed at the time of application.
Project Eligibility
The SNC may make grants to eligible partners to acquire an interest in real property, fee interest or less than fee interest, from willing sellers only. Although the SNC is prohibited by statute (PRC 33347) from purchasing real property outright, it can fund fee title acquisition by other eligible entities. To be eligible to receive a grant award from the SNC under this program, projects must meet all the following criteria:
- Be located within the Sierra Nevada Conservancy Region.
- Be consistent with the SNC mission and program areas as defined in the SNC Strategic Plan and the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program (WIP).
- Result in a clear, demonstrable, and enduring public benefit.
- Engage willing sellers only.
- Be consistent with applicable city or county General Plan.
Applicant Eligibility
Grant funds may be authorized for:
- Public agencies: Any city, county, special district, joint powers authority, state agency, or federal agency.
- Qualifying 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations: “Nonprofit Organization” means a private, nonprofit organization that qualifies for exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code, and whose charitable purposes are consistent with the purposes of the SNC.
- Eligible Tribal Entities: An Indian tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or community, or a tribal agency authorized by a tribe, which is one or both of the following: (1) Recognized by the United States and identified within the most current Federal Register; (2) Listed on the contact list maintained by the Native American Heritage Commission as a California Native American tribe.
- Eligible tribal entities are encouraged to apply. On September 25, 2020, the governor released a Statement of Administration Policy on Native American Ancestral Lands to encourage every state agency, department, board, and commission subject to his executive control to seek opportunities to support California tribes’ co-management of and access to natural lands that are within a California tribe’s ancestral land and under the ownership or control of the State of California.
NOTE: The SNC’s governing statute does not allow grants to mutual water companies.
For more information, visit Strategic Land Conservation.
